Conventionally, there is known a driving assistance apparatus that is mounted on a vehicle and that assists the vehicle in traveling. For example, Patent Document 1 describes a drive control apparatus for a hybrid vehicle including a motor and an engine as drive sources of the vehicle. The drive control apparatus includes drive selection means for selecting whether to drive only the motor or to drive at least the engine on the basis of an operating condition, signal recognition means for recognizing the state of a traffic light ahead of the vehicle traveling, and engine drive limiting means for prohibiting driving of the engine when a predetermined condition is satisfied in the case where a red light of a traffic light is recognized while the vehicle is traveling.
Patent Document 2 describes a hybrid vehicle that sets a starting threshold and a stopping threshold such that the starting threshold and the stopping threshold reduce as a vehicle speed increases and also reduce as the temperature of a battery decreases, that travels on power from an engine and power from a motor by automatically starting the engine when an engine command power required for the engine has reached the starting threshold or higher while traveling in a state where the operation of the engine is stopped, and that travels on power from the motor by automatically stopping the engine when the engine command power becomes lower than the stopping threshold while traveling in a state where the engine is operated.